Dreamsnake (32 page)

North’s follower pulled back with a yelp, tearing his hand away,
and Snake spat out his blood. There was a flurry of motion as North
and the others grabbed her by the hair and by her arm and by her
clothes and held her while they took Melissa away from her. North
twined his long fingers in her hair, holding her head back against
the wall so she could not bite again. They forced her out of the
narrow end of the crevasse. Fighting them, she staggered to her feet
as one of the followers turned toward the platform with Melissa.
North jerked her hair again and pulled her backward. Her knees
collapsed. She tried to get up but she had nothing left to fight
with, no more strength to overcome exhaustion and injury. Her left
hand around her right shoulder, blood trickling between her fingers,
she sagged to the ground.

North let go of Snake’s hair and went to Melissa, looking at her
eyes and feeling her pulse. He glanced back at Snake.

“I told you not to keep her from my creatures.”

Snake raised her head. “Why are you trying to kill her?”

“Kill her! I? You don’t know a tenth what you think you know.
You’re the one who’s endangered her.” He left Melissa and came back
to Snake, bending down to capture several serpents. He put them in a
basket, holding them carefully so they could not bite.

“I’ll have to take her out of here to save her life. She’ll hate
you for ruining her first experience. You healers flaunt your
arrogance.”

Snake wondered if he was right about arrogance; if he was, then
perhaps he was right, too, about Melissa, about everything. She
could not think properly to argue with him. “Be kind to her,” she
whispered.

“Don’t worry,” North said. “She’ll be happy with me.” He nodded
to his two followers. As they came toward Snake she tried to rise
and prepare herself for one last defense. She was on one knee when
the man she had bitten grabbed her by the right arm and pulled her
to her feet, wrenching her shoulder again. The second follower held
her up from the other side.

North leaned over her, holding a dreamsnake. “How certain are you
of your immunities, healer? Are you arrogant about them, too?”

One of his people forced Snake’s head back, exposing her throat.
North was so tall that Snake could still watch him lower the
dreamsnake.

The fangs sank into her carotid artery. Nothing happened. She
knew nothing would happen. She wished North would realize it and let
her go, let her lie down on the cold sharp rocks to sleep, even if
she never woke up. She was too tired to fight any more, too tired to
react even when North’s follower relaxed his hold. Blood trickled
down her neck to her collarbone. North picked up another dreamsnake
and held it at her throat.

When the second dreamsnake bit her, she felt a sudden flash of
pain, radiating from her throat all through her body. She gasped as
it receded, leaving her trembling.

“Ah,” North said. “The healer is beginning to understand us.” He
hesitated a moment, watching her. “One more, perhaps,” he said.
“Yes.”

When he bent over her again, his face was in shadow and the light
formed a halo of his pale, fine hair. In his hands, the third
dreamsnake was a silent shadow. Snake drew back, and the grip of
North’s followers on her arms did not change. The people who held
her acted as if hypnotized by the black gaze of the serpent. Snake
lunged forward, and for a moment she was free, but fingers like
claws dug into her flesh and the man she had bitten snarled in fury.
He dragged her back, twisting her right arm with one hand and
digging the nails of his other into her wounded shoulder.

North, who had stepped away from the scuffle, came forward again.
“Why fight, healer? Allow yourself to share the pleasure my
creatures give.” He brought the third dreamsnake to her throat.

It struck.

This time the pain radiated through her as before, but when it
faded it was followed with her pulsebeat by another wave of agony.
Snake cried out.

“Ah,” she heard North say. “Now she does understand.”

“No
…
” she whispered.

She silenced herself. She would not give North the satisfaction
of her pain.

The followers released her and she fell forward, trying to
support herself with her left hand. This time the intensity of the
sensation did not fade. It built, echoing and re-echoing through the
canyon of her body, reinforcing itself, resonating. Snake shuddered
with every beat of her heart. Trying to breathe between the
agonizing spasms, she collapsed onto the cold hard rock.

Daylight filtered into the crevasse. Snake lay as she had fallen,
one hand flung out before her. Frost silvered the ragged edges of
her sleeve. A thick white coat, of ice crystals covered the tumbled
rock fragments of the floor and crept up the side of the crevasse.
Fascinated by the lacy pattern, Snake let her mind drift among the
delicate fronds. As she gazed at them they became three-dimensional.
She was in a prehistoric forest of moss and ferns, all black and
white.

Here and there wet trails cut the traceries, throwing them
abruptly back into two-dimensionality, forming a second, harsher
pattern. The stone-dark lines looked like the tracks of dreamsnakes,
but Snake knew better than to expect any of the serpents to be
active in this temperature, active enough to slide over ice-covered
ground. Perhaps North, to safeguard them, had taken them to a warmer
place.

While she was hoping that was true, she heard the quiet rustle of
scales on stone. One of the creatures, at least, had been left
behind. That gave her comfort, for it meant she was not entirely
alone.

This one must be a hardy beast, she thought.

It might be the big one that had bitten her, one large enough to
produce and conserve some body heat. Opening her eyes, she tried to
reach out toward the sound. Before her hand could move, if it would
move, she saw the serpents.

Because many more than one remained. Two, no, three dreamsnakes
twined themselves around each other only an arm’s length away. None
was the huge one; none was much larger than Grass had been. They
writhed and coiled together, marking the frost with dark
hieroglyphics that Snake could not read. The symbols had a meaning,
of that she was sure, if she could only decipher them. Only part of
the message lay within her view, so, slowly and stiffly, she turned
her head to follow the connecting tracks. The dreamsnakes remained
at the edge of her sight, rubbing against each other, their bodies
forming triple-stranded helices.

The serpents were freezing and dying, that must be it, and
somehow she had to call North and make him save them. Snake pushed
herself up on her elbows, but she could move no farther. She
struggled, trying to speak, but a wave of nausea overcame her. North
and his creatures: Snake retched dryly, but there was nothing in her
stomach to come up and help purge her of her revulsion. She was
still under the effects of the venom.

The stabbing pain had faded to a deep, throbbing ache. She forced
it back, forced herself to feel it less and less, but she could not
maintain the necessary energy. Overwhelmed, she fainted again.

Snake roused herself from sleep, not unconsciousness. All the
hurts remained, but she knew she had beaten them when she forced
them away, one by one, and they did not return. She was still free,
and North could not enslave her with the dreamsnakes. The crazy had
described ecstasy, so the venom had not affected Snake as it
affected North’s followers. She did not know if that was because of
her healer’s immunities, or because of the resistance of her will.
It did not really matter.

She did understand why North had been so certain Melissa would
not freeze to death. The cold remained, and Snake was aware of it,
but she felt warm, even feverish. How long her body could sustain
the increased metabolism she did not know, but she could feel her
blood coursing through her and she knew she did not have to fear
frostbite.

She remembered the dreamsnakes, active beyond possibility on the
frost-jeweled ground.

That all must have been a dream, she thought.

But she looked around, and there among the dark hieroglyphics of
their trails coiled a triplet of small serpents. She saw a second
triplet, then a third, and suddenly in pure astonishment and delight
she understood the message this place and its creatures had been
trying to give her. It was as if she were the representative of all
the generations of healers, sent here on purpose to accept what was
offered.

Even as she wondered at how long it had taken to discover the
dreamsnakes’ secrets, she understood the reasons. Now that she had
fought the venom off, she could understand what the hieroglyphics
told her, and she saw much more than the many triplets of
dreamsnakes copulating on the frigid stones.

Her people, like all the other people on earth, were too
self-centered, too introspective. Perhaps that was inevitable, for
their isolation was well enforced. But as a result the healers had
been too shortsighted; by protecting the dreamsnakes, they had kept
them from maturing. That, too, was inevitable: dreamsnakes were too
valuable to risk to experimentation. It was safer to count on
nuclear-transplant clones for a few new dreamsnakes than to threaten
the lives of those the healers already had.

Snake smiled at the clarity and simplicity of the solution. Of
course the healers’ dreamsnakes never matured. At some point in
their development they needed this bitter cold. Of course they
seldom mated, even the few that spontaneously matured: the cold
triggered reproduction as well. And finally: hoping mature serpents
would meet each other, the healers followed tedious plans to put
them together
…
two by two.

Isolated from new knowledge, the healers had understood that
their dreamsnakes were alien, but they had not been able to
comprehend just how alien.

Two by two. Snake laughed silently.

She recalled passionate arguments with other healers in training,
in classes, over lunch, about whether dreamsnakes might be diploid
or hexaploid, for the number of nuclear bodies made either state a
possibility. But in all those passionate arguments, no one had been
on the side of the truth. Dreamsnakes were triploid, and they
required a triplet, not a pair. Snake’s mental laughter faded away
into a sad smile of regret for all the mistakes she and her people
had made for so many years, hampered as they were by lack of the
proper information, by a mechanical technology insufficient to
support the biological possibilities, by ethnocentrism. And by the
forced isolation of earth from other worlds, by the self-imposed
isolation of too many groups of people from each other. Her people
had made mistakes: with dreamsnakes, they had only succeeded by
mistake.

Now that Snake understood, perhaps it was all too late.

Snake felt warm and calm and sleepy. It was thirst that roused
her to wakefulness; thirst, then memory. The crevasse was perhaps as
bright as it ever got, and the stones Snake lay on were dry. She
moved her hand and felt heat seep into it from the black rock.

She eased herself upright, testing herself. Her knee hurt but it
was not swollen. Her shoulder merely ached. She did not know how
long she had slept, but the healing had already begun.

Water dripped in a tiny quick rivulet through the other end of
the crevasse. Snake stood up and went toward it, bracing herself
against the rock wall. She felt unsteady, as if she had suddenly
become very old. But her strength was still there; she could feel it
gradually returning. Kneeling beside the stream, she cupped water in
her hand and drank cautiously. The water tasted clean and cold. She
drank deeply, trusting her decision. It was exceedingly difficult to
poison a healer, but she did not much care right now to challenge
her body with more toxins.

The near-freezing water ached in her empty stomach. She put
thoughts of food aside and stood up in the center of the crevasse,
turning slowly to inspect it in daylight. The walls were rough but
not fissured; she could see no toe or fingerholds. The edge was
three times higher than she could leap even if she were not injured.
But, somehow, she had to get out. She had to find Melissa, and they
had to escape.

Snake felt lightheaded. Afraid she would panic herself, she
breathed deeply and slowly for a few long breaths, keeping her eyes
closed. It was difficult to concentrate because she knew North would
return, perhaps any second. He would want to gloat over her while
she was awake, since he had overcome her immunities and affected her
with the venom. His hatred must wish to see her groveling like the
crazy, begging until he obliged her and growing weaker each time he
did. She shivered and opened her eyes. Once he realized its true
effect on her, he would use it to kill her, if he could.

Snake sat down and unwrapped Melissa’s headcloth from her
shoulder. The material was caked and stiff with blood, and she had
to soak away the layer next to her skin. But the scab on the wound
was thick and she did not begin to bleed again. The wound was not
exactly clean: the scar would be full of dirt and grit unless she
did something about it soon. But it would not become infected and
she could not take any time over it now. She ripped a couple of
narrow strips off one edge of the square of cloth and gathered the
rest into a makeshift bag. Four big dreamsnakes lay languorously on
the rocks almost within reach. She captured them, put them in the
sack, and looked for more. The ones she had were certainly mature,
at that size, and perhaps one or two were even forming fertile eggs.
She caught three more, but the rest of the dreamsnakes had vanished.
She walked across the stones more carefully, looking for any sign of
lairs, but found nothing.